SPOILERS AHEAD
The first two thirds of this movie were amazing. I have two primary qualms about the third act.
What exactly was the plan here? When Cooper reveals himself to be the killer to Lady Raven, it’s a great way of getting out of the arena. But then what? He can’t exactly kill a pop super star without people noticing. And there’s no way he was going to let her go, just so she could name him to the police. For as calculated as he is, it would’ve been nice to say a sort of I-rigged-your-car-to-blow-up plan fall apart. At least it would have made sense for his ultimate goal of continuing to live his normal life.
The ending twist wasn’t twisty enough. I feel like the big twist was a let down because of the way I was set up. Here’s the set-up:
We’re at their home when the profiler approaches Rachel and asks if she wants a ride to her sister’s so she can be with her kids. Rachel declines. Immediately my brain does the Cardi B voice and says, “That’s weird……….that’s suspicious” because in a movie like this one it IS weird and it IS suspicious, thank you Cardi. Then the profiler leaves and Rachel is alone in the house and she puts on a pot of tea. Is it to calm her down? Or is she expecting company? Something else?
Then Cooper (Josh Hartnett) enters and I am at the edge of my seat. Having Rachel and Cooper alone in this scene strips away any need for pretense. There are no kids, no cops: we’re about to get the real deal between the both of them. Was Rachel the mastermind and Josh the executioner? Is he afraid of her now that he’s potentially gotten them both caught? Or had he done this before, she found him out, and he promised to stop but continued and now she’s had it? Or perhaps she was the killer the whole time and he’s just clean-up crew? What is it?! Because I’m not buying those whole doting housewife of a local firefighter hero act. I am foaming at the mouth Rachel, reveal yourself and your unsavory underbelly, I want to see it!!!
But no. Rachel doesn’t have an unsavory underbelly, what Rachel had was a hunch. She’s the one who tipped the cops off about the concert. That’s it. That’s the big twist. Did I mention that Rachel is played by Alison Pill? It’s worth noting because you could’ve given this character so much more depth and complexity and I was disappointed because when it comes to this character, what you see is exactly what you get. She is the doting housewife we meet in her first scene and nothing else: she is as flat and one dimensional as she seems. Perhaps that’s the twist in itself, but I hated it and I found it boring.
A tertiary, less pivotal qualm: poor Saleka Shyamalan. One day she might be a really strong actor, but whatever day that is or was, it didn’t happen while they were filming Trap. In the third act she’s given the clunkiest bit of dialogue while trying to trigger Cooper and it ends up coming off as almost laugh-out-loud funny. The dialogue in that scene was already weak and she wasn’t a strong enough actress to pull it off.
Another thing that was strange was that, while Saleka Shyamalan and Ariel Donoghue are fourteen years apart in real life, they look the same age in the movie. The dialogue reflects the age gap and we certainly can’t blame actors for having good genes, but perhaps the make-up artists could have done more to age Lady Raven up a bit.
Okay wait, I do have one more. In the third act, HOW ARE THE COPS SO LAUGHABLY TERRIBLE AT THEIR JOBS. Listen, I do not have faith in cops. But usually cops in Hollywood are portrayed as having a baseline level of competence that we did not see here. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so exhausting. By the nine millionth time Cooper escapes you have me thinking, “REALLY?! AGAIN?!” How dare you have me rooting for cops Mr. Shyamalan, I trusted you.
Compulsory bootlicking aside, there was a lot I loved about Trap.
The angst! That scene with the underwhelming twist? Still carried so. much. tension. Like knot-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach tension. Josh Hartnett and Alison Pill made me so fucking uncomfortable together and I was almost unbearably anxious, so kudos to the two of them and to the script in this scene. I loved getting the insight into how Cooper’s mind worked, how murder was something far off from him and how it was about to be personal for the first time. I love that Trap presents us with a character who is a terrible person (for the murders and such, duh) and a loving parent who’d do anything for his kids.
Truly, the angst! I really was on the edge of my seat the entire time they were in the arena. It was cool to see how Cooper’s mind worked and how easily he was able to charm and lie his way out up until the very end of the second act.
One last note: I think we should give M. Night Shyamalan credit for being a funny dude. This wasn’t a horror comedy, but there were some funny moments in there. And it was weird and out of place because the humor didn’t feel like it served to diffuse any tension, it was just there. Why was it there, M. Night Shyamalan? I honestly think the answer is simply “for the lolz.” He put random shit in there ‘cause he thought it’d be funny and he was right. What a dork. What a weirdo. I didn’t love the ending, but I think I love you, sir. Thank you for this movie, my cortisol levels do not appreciate you, but I do.
Verdict: 2.5 stars. Fuck you for the third act and how we got there but thank you for everything else.
